


No One's Gonna Love You More Than I Do

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Angst, But also, F/M, Humor, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Romance, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23604814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Several years after Thanos cut the world's population in half, Darcy Lewis is getting married. But everything is wrong, and neither she nor the man she is (but shouldn't be) marrying know that the remaining Avengers are working to bring the lost people home.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 43
Kudos: 112





	1. The Engagement Party

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, guys, you have no idea how long I have been trying to write this story. Ten chapters, between 2,000 and 3,000 words each. Thank you to everyone who will read this, whether you have been with me since I wrote my first Wintershock story three years ago or if you're just joining me now. 
> 
> Let's get through this scary time together with a bit of love, a bit of action, and a bit of Darcy Lewis' humour. 
> 
> There will be mistakes. I am so very rusty. 
> 
> But, as always, enjoy.

**. **

_ and anything to make you smile _

_ it is a better side of you to admire _

_ but they should never take so long _

_ just to be over there, then back to another one _

** Band of Horses | No One's Gonna Love You **

**. **

Clutching tightly to the long stem of the glass in her hand, Darcy looks at a man. The wrong man. She watches him chatting away with her college roommate, waving his arms animatedly. Sparkling liquid sloshes out of his glass onto the ground. He glances her way for a moment, just to smile at her, and the eye contact stirs the food in Darcy’s stomach. She forces herself to smile back before she can’t take it anymore. She looks away. Gulps the dregs of her champagne, consciously ignoring how the fading sunlight reflects off the ring on her left hand. 

She lowers the glass as a masculine figure, backlit by the sun, approaches. She swallows the bubbly drink. She swallows a groan. Forces herself not to burp as the figure’s outline closes in on her. If she had known how much mingling would be involved at an engagement party, she would have said no to the whole thing. But she didn’t know. And now she’s here, wishing she was Rose, stranded and in the ocean on a door. 

Squinting, Darcy scans the intruder, and it takes all of her willpower to not stumble backwards as she spots the long hair tucked behind the ears of this man. He introduces himself as the son of a friend of her mothers—a mouthful and another reason why Darcy should have nixed this farce; her mother invited more than half the guests—and Darcy pretends to remember him. Pretends she too has been following his life’s journey through his mom’s Facebook page. Fake laughs when he makes a joke recalling their apparent shenanigans as toddlers. 

But Darcy isn’t there. Not at the party. Not in this guy’s probably-made-up memory—what grown adult can accurately summon a thirty-year-old event? 

Darcy is stuck in her own past. She shouldn’t be, but she can’t help it. It’s _there_ , all the time, haunting her like the phantom it is, beckoning her to retreat into its warmth. She doesn’t remember this guy, but she does remember long hair. She remembers blue skies. Stretches of green grass. Goats frolicking and children playing. 

His face. That is something she will never forget. It is seared into her mind. Stitched into the fabric of her being. She will forget the world before she forgets his face. 

The wrong long-haired man stops moving his mouth. He raises his eyebrows, as if waiting for Darcy to respond to something she was supposed to have heard. He leans in. As if it was a joke she was supposed to have laughed at. So, she laughs. Her mouth widens and she slaps the guy’s arm, hoping this is the reaction he was looking for. He laughs, too, to Darcy’s relief—she could not have handled that awkwardness—and the noise hurts her ears. 

“So, your mom posted something on Facebook a while ago, a little while before, you know, the…the, uh…”

He scrambles like this for a good thirty seconds. Darcy is desperate for another glass of champagne. Or vodka. 

There hasn’t been a universal term given to the events of that spring day in 2018. People call it all sorts of things. The Decimation. The Final Reckoning. The Snap Heard ‘Round the World—which is ridiculous; she was there, and she heard nothing but silence. 

Darcy calls it what it is. The last day she was actually, really, truly happy. 

“…Well, you know what I’m talking about,” the guy says, and Darcy nods, because of course she knows what he’s talking about. He shakes his head, embarrassed. “Anyway, she mentioned that you actually got to go to Wakanda before the, you know…event. Uh, what was it like? Ever since that Black Panther guy showed up, I was desperate to go, but they’re so selective with who they let in. Especially now.” He swallows the last few drops of champagne from his glass and stands like that was the smoothest sentence uttered by man.

Darcy would laugh if she weren’t so miserable. 

“Yeah,” she says, clearing her throat as it threatens to close on her. She feels her cheeks warming. Her heart pounding. “Yeah, uh, it was great. Beautiful. Advanced.”

She needs an escape. A distraction. Anything to get this guy to stop talking about Wakanda. But no luck. She is too flustered and he is too curious.

“Why were you there, though?”

A loaded question. 

Originally, for the summer between finally getting her degree and law school. Wakanda had opened its borders and Darcy wanted to go, and she had been lucky enough to be allowed within its forcefield. 

But those few months turned into another few months, and then another few months after she met him. And she would have stayed forever if she could. 

Forever is a long time. Darcy has always thought so. It sounds exhausting. Boring. Pointless, because forever doesn’t exist, and pretending it does only sets people up for disappointment. Forever is a lie. Something people throw around as a hyperbole hidden in what they want the world to believe is truth. _I’ve been waiting forever_. Lie. _He was forever saying he wouldn’t get himself into trouble_. Lie. _I will love you forever_. Lie. The only time forever is actually the truth is in death. 

_He’s gone forever_. That’s real. There’s no way back from the underworld. Orpheus and Eurydice taught her that much. 

But the rest is pure fiction. Darcy understands Rose’s decision to let Jack go. _I’ll never let go_ is the same as _I’ll hold you forever_. The water was freezing and the door probably couldn’t have held both of them, no matter how many people want to say there was room. And had they managed to escape together, the differences between them would have been so much more glaring on shore than on the water. He was poor. She was rich. It wouldn’t have worked on land. 

Rose got there in the end. Forever with Jack wasn’t an option, so she dropped him in the ocean. 

Darcy can’t watch those sickly sweet romantic comedies where everyone ends up happy and in love. It isn’t realistic. She prefers those depressingly accurate movies that always get nominated for awards because they embody the whole _art imitates life_ thing. _500 Days of Summer_ is, to Darcy, one of the greatest films ever made. _Casablanca_ is pure perfection for a lot of reasons, one of which is that Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart part ways at the end. 

Forever doesn’t exist for Darcy. So, for the first twenty-plus years of her life, neither did marriage. Promising to love someone through thick and thin and sickness and health and whatever the hell else makes up wedding vows always made Darcy want to vomit. All she ever wants is fun. Flings. Nothing lasting longer than a month or two. Anything else is too much. 

But then she met him. And one look at him changed everything. One look and Darcy knew she would be his for eternity. Until the sun engulfed the earth. Beyond that, even. Until a black hole swallowed the entire universe. 

Her years of living inside a bubble of cynicism abruptly ended with a pop. At first, it scared her. Then, stupidly, she grew accustomed to happiness. To a positive outlook. But she forgot that good things never last in a world with superheroes and the super-villains hellbent on destroying every last drop of hope. 

“Are you not allowed to answer that?”

Darcy startles, jerked back to the present so abruptly she takes an awkward step back, the heel of her left stiletto sinking into the ground. The long-haired man is too close. He leans forward, laughing at her fumble, and holds her arm as if she has waded into quicksand. Tight. Pressurised. She can feel her arm fat leaking through his fingers.

Jerking away from his too-cold touch, Darcy groans and yanks her foot out of the mud. The shoe follows, spraying dirt on the guy’s black slacks. 

“Sorry,” she huffs, feigning another laugh. Another smile. This is it, though. She’s running out of these fake happy facial expressions. At the wedding she’ll be a frowning, moaning mess. “I didn’t quite catch that last question.”

He is smiling too, but she can tell his is as fake as hers. All he wanted was information about Wakanda, and he got a moody, buzzed Darcy suffering from PTSD-like flashbacks.

“No worries,” he says, showing her too many of his yellow teeth. “I was just wondering why you were there. In Wakanda.”

She gives the guy the briefest of explanations. Enough to make him realise she is not in the chatting mood. He leaves soon after, pointing at the rock on her finger and nodding. Whatever that gesture is meant to signify. 

Surely the gathering must be nearing its end. Darcy discreetly reaches into her dress pocket and pulls out her phone. She’s in luck, for once. The guests are meant to start leaving in the next thirty minutes. 

As a server walks by carrying a tray of short glasses with a clear liquid, Darcy reaches for a drink and catches him looking at her again. The wrong eyes. The wrong nose. Lips. Throat. The wrong everything. He doesn’t deserve this. This—her general fucked-up-ness. Her coldness. Her loveless touches and kisses. Slowly, day by day, she is ruining his life, and he doesn’t even know it. And it isn’t his fault. It’s hers. She’s the bad guy here. A bad guy in stiletto heels and a fucking flowery dress that shows way too much boob, courtesy of his mother. _At least it has pockets_ , Darcy thinks, ducking her phone out of sight. 

He mouths words at her. _Are you okay_ , he asks. She nods, her aching cheeks rising. Pretending to be in love with him would be so much easier if he weren’t so fucking nice. He is too good. After she came back from Wakanda, she was barely functioning. She stopped showering. Stopped talking to the few friends left standing after the grape guy snapped his stupid eggplant fingers. She left her apartment for the big things only. Like chocolate. And alcohol.

And it isn’t that she doesn’t love him. She does. A little bit. He helped her get through the darkest nights. And he isn’t ugly, which is a plus. 

Darcy chugs the drink in her hand, gagging as the gin burns her insides. 

“Darcy, darling, you’re not being ladylike.” Her mother appears out of thin air like a terrifying magician. Snatching the glass from Darcy, the older woman stands in front of her, blocking the sun, her eyes dripping with concern. Darcy looks her mother up and down. The white dress she wears is lovely on her. It sits like a rectangle, but a pretty, shimmery rectangle. _Christ_ , she must be drunk.

“You’re not happy,” she observes.

“I’m trying to be.”

“You shouldn’t have to _try_. This is your engagement party.”

Hearing the words out loud churns the acid in Darcy’s stomach. “I know,” she says, swallowing a gulp of air. “I know what this is. That’s why I’m trying so hard to be happy.”

Her mother’s face looks as it did back when Darcy accidentally broke the television and lied about it. Disappointed. Slightly agitated. “You shouldn’t be going through with this. There is no need for you to settle down, darling. You lost someone very dear to you.”

“Five years ago, mom. Don’t you think I should be over it by now?” she asks, hoping no-one else can hear their conversation. “I do—I think I should be over it. This is me moving on.”

“You can move on without marrying someone you don’t want to marry.”

Darcy’s throat burns, and it isn’t the alcohol. It isn’t the bile. It’s the memories seeping from their lockbox in her head. Over and over and over, they play like skipping records. Flashing like a snow squall, leaving her shivering and craving heat. 

She asked him to stay behind with her. Begged him. But he had spent too long rebuilding himself as a hero, and he needed to join the fight.

“Plenty of people do it,” she says, the words moving around the ashy lump in her throat. “Joel is kind. He’s got a good job. I don’t have to worry about him running into battle. He’s safe.”

Her mother nods once. The Lewis sign of surrender. “I’m only looking out for you,” she says.

“I know. Thank you.” Darcy leans in for a hug, and takes the moment her face is buried in her mother’s hair to exorcise the sob that has been choking her all afternoon. Disentangling herself from her mother’s arms, Darcy smooths out her dress. Urges the corners of her mouth up. Wipes at the debris of mascara and eyeliner gathered beneath her eyes. “It’s almost time to wrap this party up. I’ve got a speech to give.”

“Make sure it’s clean,” her mother warns as Darcy starts walking away towards the setting sun. “I don’t want Grandma to die of a heart attack at your engagement party because you couldn’t stop swearing for two minutes.”

Darcy laughs. Really laughs, and the coal in her throat shrinks ever so slightly. 

Joel is waiting for her at the table upon which lies all the gifts their guests brought. She moves in his direction, ignoring the magnetic pull coming from the opposite direction, goading her to run away. 

“Have I told you how beautiful you look yet?” he asks, wrapping an arm around her waist. His hand doesn’t quite fit. It hangs loosely. His fingertips brush her hip.

Darcy looks up at him. “Several times.” He smiles at that, somehow wider than before, and Darcy’s gaze moves past him to the blue sky.

Nobody knows where they went. The people turned to dust. Some think they returned to the earth as ash. Some think they simply disappeared. Darcy believes they are somewhere above. In the clouds. The atmosphere. She believes he is in every one of her breaths. 

Darcy inhales, his name dancing in her lungs. 

_Bucky_.


	2. The Speech

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back. Sorry about the long break. I'm finding it sort of difficult to write at the moment, which is frustrating. But here we are again, and I am going to do my absolute best to get two chapters of this story out a week. Please hold me to this! Bombard me with messages if I start slacking. Tuesdays and Saturdays, guys. Keep an eye out.
> 
> Thank you for the positive response. There are just a couple of chapters to go before we get to the real meat of the story. I almost forgot as I writing this chapter that this isn't just a depressing story of sad Darcy missing Bucky. There will be action. There will be romance. Promise.
> 
> As always, enjoy.

**. **

_ we're reeling through an endless fall _

**. **

For what is probably, sadly, the first time in their relationship, Darcy is glad to have Joel’s limp hand resting on her hip. Without the marginal support, she is sure she would fall. Standing in front of the crowd of leftover friends and family, Darcy watches their bodies wobble as if she’s staring at them through warped glass. 

Darcy was meant to prepare for this moment—she and Joel had agreed: he would speak at their wedding, the more serious event where her jokes might not land as well, and she would speak at their engagement party. Give a great love speech with hints of crude humour. But she’s a natural procrastinator. Add not actually feeling the love to the mix and Darcy has nothing to say. 

She wants to sit down. No. Really, she wants to run away from this mess. But she promised these people, the man—the wrong man—standing next to her a speech rivalling that of Shakespeare. Besides, she’s probably too tipsy to make any sort of quick getaway. 

Swallowing the last remnants of alcohol on her tongue, Darcy widens her eyes and leans against Joel. “So. Love.” The audience bursts, pops open, showering her with specks of saliva and carbon dioxide, as if Darcy has just delivered the Guinness World Record holder for funniest joke. She uses the moment of explosive laughter to quickly grab at words, string them into sentences, forming a haphazard speech in her mind.

She smiles. It’s painful. Her cheeks are so sore. She leans even further into Joel, who takes her weight like a champ. “Yeah, isn’t love a funny thing. No two people seem able to share a definition of what love actually is. That is funny,” she says, coughing out a laugh. “Some think it’s just chemicals in your brain working some dark science that makes your dick hard or your vagina wet.” More laughs. Darcy peeks at her mother, the only individual not sharing a chuckle. Even her grandmother is covering her mouth to hide her snickers.

“Others,” she continues, “aren’t as skeptical. They believe love is a supernatural force that constricts the soul. They see love as the only true substance. They think love can conquer all.” Darcy takes a breath, mentally thanking her sophomore year English teacher for supplying her with these words. She’s surprised she can remember the lectures on _Romeo and Juliet_ this many years later. They must have been buried inside of her, waiting for the perfect opportunity to reveal themselves. 

“To be honest, I used to be in category number one. I thought love wasn’t real. I thought it was nothing more than your brain playing tricks on you. I went so many years of my life believing that. I guess that’s what happens when you’re the product of an ugly divorce,” Darcy says, glancing between her mother and father standing at opposite ends of the garden. They offer her remorseful smiles. Darcy shakes her head in response, her throat tightening. “But then something changed. I met someone, and I remember the way my heart skipped like it was jumping rope whenever I saw him. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been to think that love was a scientific phenomenon. Right? Like, how fucking stupid of me.”

Joel’s hand grips her hip in a way it never has done before, and Darcy swallows a gasp, forgetting for the slightest moment that she’s meant to be talking about him. Them. Their story. Joel bends down. He plants a kiss on the top of her head, and she feels like she could throw up. The alcohol churns away in her stomach, binding with the acid, burning her flesh from the inside. 

Sweat tears through her pores. Closing her eyes, shielding herself from the flaming sun, Darcy forces herself to calm down before Joel catches on. Before she has a full blown panic attack about another man at her engagement party. 

She sees him. His long hair. The fabric dyed the colour of dried blood wrapped around his shoulder, hiding his missing limb. 

_Go inside_ , he had said when they heard footsteps coming towards their hut. She had held his hand. Pleaded with him to refuse whatever it was they offered him. _I can’t_. _Whatever it is_ , he had said, _I have to stay_. 

“Are you okay?” 

Darcy flinches as Joel’s voice presses against her ear. She stumbles, but Joel’s hand is so tight on her hip that she is righted almost instantly. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she lies, the sick feeling inside of her settling. Her cheeks round as she stares out into the crowd. “How many of you know the story of how Joel and I met?” She feels like a kindergarten teacher with the way a section of the crowd raise their hands delightedly. “I am too drunk to count, but there are enough of you without your hands raised for me to feel justified in telling this meet-cute. Okay, here goes.”

Joel thinks their story is romantic. A tale straight out of the _Faerie Queene_. White knight rescues fair maiden in distress. 

Everyone else who hears the story is of the same mind. _You could pitch it to Hollywood_ , they say. _I’d pay to see it on the big screen_. 

But it wasn’t cute. Nothing about the day Darcy met Joel was cute. Especially not her. 

Two years ago, she was nestled in her pit of despair. Out of work. Not showering on a regular basis. Only when her mother came round to check on her did she muster up enough energy for a shower, most of which was spent on the floor of the bathtub in her shitty apartment. She stayed there until the water got cold, and as the spray hit her like ice needles she slapped some body wash on and shampooed her tangled mess of hair. She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. She stopped calling whichever friends had been lucky enough to be spared by the purple giant. She stayed in bed, too exhausted to move, too barren to cry.

Her mother called it depression. Grief. But it was deeper than that. It wasn’t her brain’s fault. There was an emptiness within her, engulfing her, splitting her apart from the inside out. She felt herself splintering, breaking open. Bits of her peeled away each time she took a step. Soon, nothing of her would be left. 

Because it wasn’t as if her boyfriend had died. Bucky didn’t _die_. He turned to dust. He vanished into thin air and was carried away by the wind. There was no funeral. No grave. There wasn’t enough room on the earth for the amount of graves needed after the battle. Dreams were all she had left of him. Dreams and a handful of photographs she managed to save from their hut before she was shipped out of Wakanda, still pleading with him to come with her. 

No one at this party wants to hear all of that, though, and she isn’t strong enough to consider telling them. So Darcy tells the watered down version. “I was at the grocery store,” she says, “in the wine section,” she says, “and I accidentally dropped the bottle I was holding,” she says.

She doesn’t mention that it was eight o’clock in the morning and she was still drunk from the night before. Or that she was on day ten of not showering. Or that she had thrown the bottle of pinot noir to the linoleum floor on purpose, and that she stood there feeling absolutely nothing as blood red liquid pooled at her feet. 

“Joel rushed to my aid,” Darcy says, “shooing me away from the mess and insisting on paying for the wine.” She looks up at him, at his wrong face, into his wrong eyes, and feels a twinge of guilt. She looks out again into the crowd of doe-eyed spectators. “He offered me his number, but I didn’t call for . . . how long was it?”

“Seven weeks,” Joel supplies, pursing his lips, and their guests double over. 

“Seven weeks. But I did call, and now here we are. Happy as can be,” she says, that twinge turning into a knot in her gut. “Love is a really weird thing. It makes you sick. Happy. Psychotic, sometimes. I’ve come to learn that it’s actually a fucking beautiful thing. It makes you whole.” Darcy’s throat itches. She drags her nails along her neck and flakes of her are taken by the breeze. 

Bucky made her whole. After meeting him, she finally understood what Plato was going on about when he theorised that people, split apart by Zeus, wandered aimlessly until finding their missing half. 

He was her missing half. With him inside of her, she was full. Complete

Joel fills a few cracks here and there. She is better now because of him. She showers. She eats. But she will never be complete again.

**.**

Darcy scrubs at the dried mud on her stilettos, bent over the bathtub, covered in suds and sweat. The water in the bath slowly turns a grainy brown. Specks of green float to the surface. An earthy scent fills the air, and she debates just throwing the fucking things in the trash. They aren’t her style. Until that afternoon, Darcy hadn’t worn high heels over an inch in height since graduating high school. Plus, they’re the same colour as her skin. Sallow. Tired alabaster. The blisters on her pinky toes and heels agree tossing them is the right course of action. 

But they were a gift from her soon-to-be mother-in-law. She can’t just chuck them out. 

She continues scrubbing, her elbow aching, with the Beatles playing from her phone’s speaker. 

“I do think,” comes Joel’s voice from the doorway, startling Darcy out of her skin, “that today was a success.”

“I agree,” Darcy says. She hears him enter the bathroom and grab his toothbrush. She doesn’t turn to look at him.

“Everyone loved your speech,” he commends pridefully.

Darcy shuts her eyes. “I would have been upset if they didn’t. I would have rioted.”

“Oh, I know,” Joel laughs. 

Darcy swallows and turns her neck, catching him watching her in the mirror above the sink. He winks at her and runs his spare hand through his blond hair. The loose waves wash over his forehead. As he starts brushing his teeth, Darcy returns to her task, blocking the feel of Joel’s body behind her, focusing on the music instead. 

Two minutes pass by in relative silence before Joel makes a sound of disapproval. 

“Shouldn’t leave this next to the sink,” he says, crouching beside her. Between his pinched fingers is her ring. 

Really, it’s his grandmother’s ring. Or maybe his great-great-grandmother’s ring. She isn’t sure how long it’s been in his family. It isn’t hers. It never will be. She isn’t brave enough to lay claim to the glimmering teardrop. 

“I almost knocked it down the drain.” He stands, kissing her on the top of the head. “I’ll put it on your bedside table, okay?”

“Okay, yeah. Thanks.”

He flashes his freshly brushed teeth as he heads out the bathroom, halting at the very last second. “Oh, and could you please turn that lousy music off?” he adds, still grinning as if the request is totally normal, and heat rushes to Darcy’s face. Unable to respond with words, she nods and quickly pauses Paul McCartney’s voice. “Thanks, babe. I’m headed to bed. Don’t be up too late.”

Joel departs, leaving Darcy in silence.

She spends the next several minutes cleaning her shoes. By the time she’s finished, her knees are almost too sore for her to stand. With wrinkled fingers, Darcy unplugs the drain and watches the dirty, grassy water disappear.

In the living room, Darcy stares at a box. A hidden box, buried in the linen closet behind a set of violently red sheets. She shouldn’t touch it. Not tonight. Not ever. What if Joel came out and saw its contents? The risk is almost too much. 

Almost, but not quite.

Fiddling with her ring, Darcy holds her breath and lunges for the box. She sits on the sofa. A royal purple love seat. Fresh from the set of a ‘70s porno. Another gift from Joel’s mother, given to them the day Darcy moved in with her son. Its velveteen feel sets Darcy’s hair on-end. 

Her heart races as she settles back, the ultra soft cushions nearly swallowing her. She feels like she has just committed a crime. Taken part in an illicit trade-off of goods. Taking a deep breath, Darcy removes the box’s lid. Her hands buzz as if a swarm of bees has attacked her palms. The venom moves out to her extremities, fizzing and popping. She reaches inside, vibrating, heart banging against her ribs, and pulls out the first item her numb fingers graze. 

A photograph. Just of him. Bucky. Standing with a baby goat in his arms, surrounded by children. His smile is contagious even in picture form, and Darcy’s lips pull up of their own volition as her eyes fill with tears, blurring the image. She grabs a handful of photos. The next is of the two of them, sitting on a bale of hay next to their hut. His arm is around her shoulder. Years and miles away from the moment, she feels his phantom touch, and she muffles a sob against the back of her hand. 

Darcy leans forward. Laying the photographs side by side, one after another on the coffee table, the images tell a story. She snapped at least one picture a day during her time in Wakanda. Placed in front of her is a photo diary of the best and worst days of her life. There is one of Darcy on her first day in Africa, sweltering in her western clothes, her hair sticking to her sweaty face. She follows the trail of glossy paper to the moment she stepped foot in Wakanda, still inappropriately dressed, but grinning with excitement. 

She met him that day. Not on purpose. She had been walking, wandering, exploring the vast plains. She heard the goats and followed their bleats. Darcy has been a sucker for farm animals since her time in England. At first, he wasn’t there. But he must have heard her, or sensed her, and he came out, confused to find a person with an American accent cooing at his goats. 

And that was it. For her, at least. 

She recognised him from the news. From museums. From history classes. Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier. 

_Darcy_ , she had said, getting to her feet so quickly she almost fell backwards. He had looked even more confused, his forehead creasing, his blue eyes scanning her with apprehension. _My name_ , she had explained. She laughed and held out her hand. _My name is Darcy_. _Sorry_.

He had cautiously taken her proffered hand, shaking firmly once. Her soul had fluttered, awakening from its decades’-long slumber. 

Unlike with Joel—unlike with anyone before—Darcy did not wait. And to her surprise, neither did Bucky. She wondered aloud to him one night if he had responded to her so quickly because he was going on seventy years of celibacy. It was the first time she had heard him laugh. Truly laugh. Not a girly giggle, or a schoolboy chuckle, or a huff of breath through the nose. A belly laugh that rumbled through his body and into hers. 

She misses his laugh. 

She misses his everything. 

Blowing her nose into a tissue quietly so as to not disturb Joel, Darcy picks up the second-to-last photograph. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, brothers in arms once again. 

Steve. She hasn’t heard from him in years. Not since he called her from among the ashes on the battlefield, trying not to cry as he told her how Bucky ruptured in front of him. Of how Steve’s name was the last thing he said. 

The weight of his words from that day rests heavy on her shoulders. She wishes she could talk to him, but she understands why he’s kept his distance. Guilt. She feels it too, all the time. 

Exhausted and feeling the beginnings of a hangover, Darcy clears away the photos carefully and musters enough energy to get to her feet in order to once again bury the box. 

She checks the locks on the front door and windows. Ensures the dishwasher is running. Turns off the light above the sink. She shuffles to bed, careful not to disturb Joel. He rotates away from her as she settles beneath the covers. 

It takes her a long while, her brain forming images of Bucky, taunting her with the past, but eventually she sleeps, dreaming only of him. 


	3. The Blip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all. It's a bit shorter than the other chapters are going to be, and that the other two have been, but there is only one purpose for this chapter. It didn't make sense to drag it out. 
> 
> Thanks again for your support. And with forty minutes until midnight on the east coast, here is chapter three.
> 
> Enjoy.

**.**

_ the whole thing's tumbling down _

**. **

She is watching TV when it happens. Pacey has just kissed Joey, right in the middle of a sentence, and the landline she forgot Joel insisted they get for some reason starts going. It _brrrriiinnggss_ loudly. For a second, she is convinced she has been thrown through time to the 1940s. Then her cell phone rings, vibrating against the coffee table, flashing as if she’s at an EDM concert, and in the bedroom Joel’s phone blasts “Living on a Prayer”. 

Darcy jumps at the sudden bombardment of noise, dropping the cup of water she’d been holding all over herself. Over the velvet sofa and floor. The glass shatters as it hits the hardwood, sending shards in every direction. 

“What the _fuck_?” she exclaims, a shiver trickling down her spine. From the water. From the fear. Something must be happening—she can figure out that much. The question is, _what_ is happening, and will it involve her and Joel scouring the streets of Brooklyn for a war-era bomb shelter. 

Tucking her legs up, Darcy leans towards the coffee table and grabs her phone. Her hand goes limp as she sees the name and its accompanying photograph. Darcy presses the green _Answer_ button, a haze settling over the room.

“Jane?” she croaks, her mouth suddenly so dry her tongue feels like it did that time she took Ativan on the plane journey to New York from Wakanda. She feels drowsy and hyperaware at the same time. 

“Darcy, oh my God, you’re the first person who’s picked up. I—I have no idea what’s happened.”

Darcy’s throat is so tight she can barely breathe. “I don’t know either. Where are you?”

Darcy hears Jane inhale, preparing to respond, though she can’t imagine what Jane could say to even such a simple question considering the fact that five years ago she disappeared along with billions of other people. Just as Jane says something, a word Darcy can’t even hear above the buzzing in her ears, a tremor runs through the apartment. The small chandelier above the kitchen island rattles, its glass tendrils clinking together. On the floor, the splinters of her water glass jump like popping corn. 

The bedroom door swings wide. Joel rushes out, phone pressed to his ear, his face filled with panic. Fear. Confusion. He looks at her for only a moment before heading for the TV, and she can only guess she wears the same deluge of emotions. 

“Careful of the glass,” she manages to eek out one footfall before Joel stomps on her broken cup. 

He leaps like a child playing hopscotch over the shards and picks up the remote, although before he can press any button to change the channel to a news station, the TV screen goes black. Then, a nanosecond later, wobbly, vibrant horizontal stripes take over. The speakers beep at them. High pitched pips. A message pops up. _Breaking. Please switch to news channel_. 

Darcy can’t help but feel like the world is ending. Armageddon II: Five Years Later. Even with the miraculous and mystifying reappearance of Jane suggesting the opposite, Darcy’s heart twists and withdraws from her chest cavity, convinced this is the conclusion of her story. Maybe it’s Mr. Grape, dissatisfied with his original plan, so he’s come back for the rest of them. 

But Jane. 

“We are getting multiple reports,” booms a voice from the television, and Darcy looks to see a frazzled woman sits at a news desk, her eyes clearly following a prompter, “that those taken from us five long years ago have come back. Those witnessing these sudden returns say people thought to be dead as a result of what some call The Snap are reappearing looking the same as they did when they fell victim to said Snap.”

They’re back.

Darcy can feel her blood as it trickles out of her face, pooling within her feet. Her stomach tenses. She glances at Joel whose eyes are cemented to the news anchor’s lips.

“There are also reports of a fight taking place in upstate New York involving the men and women previously belonging to the Avengers. We are to believe the fractured group have come together once again and somehow managed to reverse the devastating effects of The Snap, though this is an unconfirmed theory.” The woman takes a breath. She is pale. Sweating. The stuff glitters in the studio lighting. Her makeup beads and falls down her temples. “We have a helicopter on its way to the location of the rumoured fight. Stick with us and we will keep you updated as more information comes to light.”

“Jane,” Darcy whispers, her phone pressed tightly against her ear, “you need to call your parents.”

“My parents? This is freaking me out. Darcy, do you know what’s going on?”

Darcy laughs, though nothing is funny. The sound is foreign to her, as if uttered by someone else. Her lips tremble and her eyes swell and twitch. “No,” she says.

The aerial view of what once was the Avengers Facility is stunning. Dreadful. Darcy and Joel sit together on the sofa, and she is so overwhelmed with gratitude that she has his hand to hold as the cameras cut from explosions and gunfire to news anchors scrambling to relay information the instant it comes in. 

Jane is not the only person who has called Darcy. Several of her vanished friends have phoned, all as confused as Jane. As Darcy. Joel has been answering calls as well. 

Darcy is too stunned to cry. She goes through moments insisting this is all a dream. A nightmare brought about by her subconscious unwillingness to marry the man clutching her hand. She feels as she did the day she had a tooth extracted in the eleventh grade. They put her on nitrous. She breathed in the air and it was as if her soul left her body. She floated in the room above herself. 

She felt nothing, not even when the procedure was complete. She left the dentist walking like the ground would fall away. Like she would slip through the cracks in the sidewalk. Her body was hollow, and everything around her moved like the signal was going in and out, teetering and tottering, pulsating and lurching. 

Her mother dragged her to the car. She talked to Darcy the whole way home, but Darcy cannot remember a word she said. 

Then, just as they were pulling up to their condo’s driveway, she vomited all over her legs and the car floor. And suddenly her soul reentered, and the world stopped swaying. 

Darcy can’t help but wonder if throwing up now would have the same beneficial effect. Because she is sitting here, but her mind and soul and senses are somewhere else. In some other realm. And she knows why her hands and feet and face are numb. Why her lungs are screaming as if someone is inside of her, clawing at them. 

Because if Jane is back, if all of these people are back, if the Avengers have forgotten their feud long enough to reverse whatever the fuck that psychopathic alien did to their planet five years ago, then maybe, maybe, he is there. There, in the world again, breathing the same air as her.

The possibility fills her with delirium. And dread, because next to her is Joel. Good Joel who even as he spoke with his newly-returned best friend cleared away the broken glass on the floor. Darcy never told Joel about him. She never told anyone about him except for her mother, and even then she spilled her guts only in a drunken stupor. He has been her secret for five years, living within her, keeping her moving. 

And if he’s back, what happens to the life she has been reluctantly building since his body collapsed at Steve Roger’s feet. 

Darcy’s fingernails are chewed beyond recognition by the time the battle is over. The grape is dead. So is Tony Stark. So are countless others. 

The station she and Joel have been watching from the beginning have a man among the ruins. Smoke is in the air. She recognises the anchor as a brunette, but his hair is an ashy white as he walks with his cameraman throughout the battlefield. 

Darcy has heard the adage _my heart is in my throat_ before. She had never understood it. Her heart always dropped to her stomach like a boulder. But she knows the feeling as she watches, wide-eyed, the man traverse the bloody mess. Darcy’s heart is in her throat. It pounds against her neck, expanding, choking her. She has not breathed a proper breath in hours. 

The camera pans to the left. The right. Left again. 

And there, right there, sitting on the wing of a downed plane, gun in his lap, hair hanging over his face like a matted curtain, blood and dirt smeared across his knuckles, air entering and exiting his lungs.

Alive.

Bucky.

White sparks fill Darcy’s vision. Nitrous oxide bubbles in her brain. She stands abruptly, and the blood in her feet scrambles up to her head. The white sparks turn blue. 

Grey. 

Black.


	4. The Knock at the Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a day late, but yesterday I was exhausted for no apparent reason and had no energy to finish writing this chapter. But it's here now, and expect the next one on Saturday! (There are going to be mistakes, but I will fix them tomorrow!)
> 
> Be prepared. This chapter is not happy. Like, at all.
> 
> Enjoy. If you can.

**. **

_ you are the ever-living ghost of what once was _

_ i never want to hear you say that you'd be better off _

_ or you like it that way _

**. **

Darcy wakes up with a bag of frozen pineapple chunks pressed against her forehead. The triangular bits of fruit press unevenly into her flesh, and she shivers, grabbing the bag. Her eyes flutter open as ice cold water trickles into her hair. The back of her head hurts. So does the front. Turning her head to the side, her cheek brushing crushed velvet, she sees a figure knelt before her. Joel’s face wobbles in and out of focus as if her brain is having trouble rejoining the WiFi, and she looks at the cream coloured wall above his blond head of hair hoping to reconfigure her connection.

She passed out. She must have done. With her free hand, she gingerly feels the back of her skull, wincing as her fingers locate a good sized lump. 

“Careful,” Joel warns, taking the pineapple and placing it on the floor. He leans close to her and waves a pencil thin flashlight in her eyes. “You might have a slight concussion. Do you feel sick?”

Yes. God, yes. She feels like a fire has been lit within her. It charrs her insides. Sends smoke up her throat and out of her nostrils. Fumes whirl in her head and leak through her tear ducts. She wants to be sick. She wants to curl into a ball and never unravel. 

She saw his face. It was there, on her television screen, splattered with blood and ash, and caked in mud. 

Death is meant to be the only sure thing in the world. Life throws so many curveballs, deals so many different cards, but death comes to them all. Death is final. She has spent the last five years desperately trying to move on because she knows—or, thought she knew—that there was no chance of him returning. 

He was ash. Dust. Minute particles floating in the air like pollen. She has had countless nightmares picturing his body crumbling like a flaming, charred log. People can’t come back from that. 

But he is back. 

He is back and she is marrying someone else.

Darcy sits up. White spots invade her vision, and she has the strangest, sickest sense of deja vu. Joel presses her shoulder, urging her to lie back down, but Darcy needs to get up. She needs to shed this skin entrapping her. There are bugs crawling up and down her arms, her legs, her stomach. They creep towards her throat. Dance between her toes. 

Pushing Joel away, Darcy gets to her feet, unsure of where she is planning to go. The apartment suddenly feels too small. It gets smaller with every one of her ragged breaths, and soon it will close around her like shrink wrap. She will be sausage meat stuffed securely in its casing. 

Darcy clasps her face. Runs her hands through her hair, pulling strands out of their roots. Sweat runs out of every single pore on her body. Joel is behind her saying things, but the words sound like hums, like the crackle of a chainsaw. Before she can move further away from him, Joel encircles her wrist and comes to stand in front of her. His face is pure concern. 

She stares at his mouth. Open and close, open and close. Still, nothing reaches her ears. 

Joel lets go of her wrist and wraps his arms around her. Sobs wrack her lungs as he holds her, her body convulsing involuntarily against him. Wet stuff streams down her face, soaking into his grey sweater. Slowly, Joel moves them towards the bedroom, never once releasing her. With gentleness and ease, Joel lowers Darcy onto the bed. She sits on the edge, a thunderstorm with booms of thunder and cracks of lightning clanging inside her head. He gets on his knees. He takes her hands, but she can’t feel it above the buzzing. It is as though someone has injected her blood with Coca-Cola. Her fingers, her chest, the soles of her feet thrum like live wires. 

She watches Joel’s mouth move through tears and lightning strikes, images of his face—Bucky’s face, the right face, his bloodied and sad and _alive_ face—racing behind her eyelids every time she closes her eyes. 

Joel releases her hands and moves them to her face. Running his thumbs over her cheeks, she pieces together the words coming out of his mouth: _breathe, Darcy, breathe_. 

Honestly, she doesn’t want to breathe. She would be okay passing out again. At least if she’s knocked out, she isn’t forced to contend with this dramatically unprecedented turn of events. Despite her urge to fall back into nothingness, Darcy gathers all of her strength and inhales a hiccup of a breath. The smallest puff of air. It enters her lungs like a backwards cough. Over the next ten minutes, she breathes. No thoughts enter her head. No cries exit her mouth. Joel counts her inhales and exhales, and he doesn’t let go of her face until she leans away from him, exhausted.

She feels as if she has just run a marathon. Not that she’s ever run a marathon, but she imagines this level of weariness accompanies finishing a 26.2 mile run. Everything still tingles, but it’s less of an intense fizz. Her nerve-endings frayed, Darcy wipes her face with the tissue Joel hands her, his face still a mask of worry.

“How do you feel?” 

Darcy starts nodding. Not because she feels okay, but because she can’t have Joel asking questions about why she had such a massive reaction to the day’s news. She nods once and is about to nod again when the bubbles in her stomach shoot upwards like a rocket and spill out of her mouth in a rush of bile and acid. The stuff goes all over Joel’s trousers. Champion that he is, he looks hardly disgusted as Darcy spews apologies, her mouth tasting of vinegar. 

“Oh, God,” Darcy moans as Joel stands. The smell is overpowering. Darcy blocks her nose with her fingers. “I can’t believe I just threw up on you.”

“It’s fine. It’s the mild concussion,” he insists, shaking his head. He smiles warmly. “I think it’s best I don’t go in to work tonight. You clearly are not okay, and I’d kick myself if I left and something bad happened.”

“What? No! I think you _have_ to go to work tonight. The hospital is going to need every nurse it can get its hands on. I’ll be fine, I promise. And if not, I’ll call you.”

Joel sighs. “Are you sure?” 

“Of course I’m sure,” she says. She needs him out of here, distracted by sick patients. Questions regarding her panic attack need to remain at a minimum. “Get out of those rancid clothes and shower before you’re late for your shift. I’ll rest here.”

“You should shower too,” Joel suggests, starting to remove his trousers.

“I will. After you’ve gone to work. I promise not to pass out in the shower.”

Joel kisses the top of her head as he walks out of the bedroom, and Darcy shivers. Another wave of nausea crashes over her. The moment the door to the bathroom closes, Darcy mouth pulls downward. She plants her face in her hands. Never in her life has she been more confused and terrified and hopeless. 

The next month was meant to go smoothly. She was going to get married to the man she sort-of-doesn’t-really-love, go on a semi-romantic honeymoon to Oregon, and live out a mundane life. Everything was planned. She knew she was not going to be happy, but she had, up to this point, made peace with the sorry fact. 

How the fuck was she supposed to know her ex-boyfriend would rise from the grave mere weeks before her wedding.

Darcy’s chest hurts. The scalding water from the spitting shower head eases the ache slightly, but each breath, no matter how short or long, is painful. She stands in the bathtub, burning her skin in the hope it will distract her from her racing thoughts. 

No. They aren’t racing. 

Darcy’s thoughts have reached hyperspace. 

Flashes of her months in Wakanda flood her mind, mixed with sick-inducing guilt and despair and disgust. 

Darcy smacks a hand against the tile wall and grabs at whatever thought she can before her head explodes. 

_Looking at him hurts. He’s so beautiful. He reminds her of those marble statues in all of those museums. Like he was carved by the Romans. The moonlight and starlight strike him at stunning angles, casting shadows over his hardened face. He crouches by the swollen goat and runs a hand over her protruding belly, his eyes narrow, his eyebrows furrowed._

_Darcy stands beside him, not paying a lick of attention to the labouring goat. She should be. She is here because she has experience with birthing farm animals. But he’s too distracting._

_The goat bleats. A gargled sound. It startles Darcy, and she looks down at the goat as she lifts her head to stare at them pleadingly._

_“I think it’s starting,” Bucky says, looking up at her._

_“Uh, yeah,” she agrees. She eyes between the goat’s back legs and sees fluid leaking into the hay scattered around Bucky’s home. “Let’s do this.”_

It was the first time they had spent time alone together. The first time she made him laugh. The first time he touched her—an afterbirth-ridden handshake. It was the beginning of it all. Them. Their love story. A short first chapter, but nonetheless exhilarating. The following day she had come down to check on the baby goat. Bucky asked her to name the kid. Citing his disconnect from pop culture, he insisted she would come up with something better. 

She went with Baby. 

_“Baby?” He raises an eyebrow at her. She sees him actively suppressing a smile. “Not exactly the creativity I was hoping for.”_

_“You don’t understand,” she complains._

_“Explain it to me.”_

_“_ Dirty Dancing _. Best movie ever made. Lead character goes by Baby.”_

He had nodded like he magically understood, and she sat on the grass, stroking Baby’s head, thinking how empty a life it must be living without having seen _Dirty Dancing_. She showed him the film a week later. When it was over, when her voice was hoarse after singing “I’ve Had (The Time of My Life)” at the top of her lungs, she tried to kiss him. 

He had pulled back.

She had turned pink with embarrassment. Apologised. Avoided him for the next three days until he came to her room. 

_“Oh,” she says, startled to find him at her door. Her heart plummets. “Is everything okay with the goats?”_

_“What? No, no, they’re fine,” he emphasises. Darcy’s heart remains in her stomach. Bucky glances behind her. “Can I come in?”_

_For a second she thinks she has misheard him, but he stands there eyes wide, and she nods belatedly, allowing him inside. The place is a mess. Clothes litter the floor. Hair products take up all the counter space in the bathroom—she has yet to find something to combat the humidity-induced frizz._

_She waits by the closed door as he looks around at her sloppy housekeeping skills. To be fair, she is so busy every day, shadowing native Wakandans, birthing goats, that tidying her barely-used room is hardly at the top of her to-do list._

_Bucky goes to the table by her bed. He picks up a polaroid, and her insides clench. She knows what the image is._

_Goats. Him._

_“Why are you here?” she asks as clearly as she can manage._

_Bucky puts the photo down and faces her. There is a metre between them. Less when he takes a few unsure steps towards her._

_“I’m sorry,” he says._

_“Sorry? Why?”_

And for the worst second of her life at that point, she thought Shuri had not succeeded in ridding the former assassin’s mind of HYDRA’s influence. She thought he had come there to kill her.

He hadn’t.

_Bucky does not respond with words. Perhaps because he has spent so long screaming._

_He takes a half-step. Then another. He is right in front of her. She feels his breath, moving harshly out of his mouth._

_His hand cups her face, and her eyes close instinctively._

_The press of his lips feels like the kiss of a strawberry. Sweet. Cool. Delicious. Darcy always thought it was beyond fucking stupid when girls in books “melted” when kissed. But there she is, melting against Bucky’s mouth, seeping into him, becoming one with him. There will be nothing of her left when he pulls away._

When the water turns cold, Darcy aimlessly applies shampoo and conditioner to her hair. She slaps floral body wash on. She touches her lips, tasting strawberry. 

The knock comes at eleven-forty-two. Darcy jumps, pausing _Dirty Dancing_ and cautiously getting to her feet. She thumbs away the stray tears on her swollen cheeks and inches towards the door. Most likely it is a neighbour telling her to shut the film off, but since her days working with SHIELD, Darcy has grown to expect the worst. 

Getting to her tiptoes, Darcy spies through the peephole. 

She staggers back. Rapidly, the cola returns to her blood. She fizzes and bubbles and pops. 

He knocks again. Then, he speaks. 

Her name drips from his lips like sugarcane.

Slowly, stupidly, Darcy unlatches the chain and turns the lock. She opens the door. They stand there like fools staring dumbly at each other, panting like wild dogs caught in a heatwave. She feels her soul cracking and glueing itself together on repeat. 

He’s alive. He’s there. Right there. She could reach out and touch him.

Darcy’s hand involuntarily stretches towards his face. He is warm as he leans against her touch. He looks exhausted, though it’s hard to get a good picture through the cascade of tears. His hand—the real one, the only one she’s known—clasps hers, and for a moment everything settles. It is as if the past five years were a fever dream. A night terror. 

She is seconds away from jumping into his arms when his mouth suddenly downturns. Removing her hand from his cheek, he presses his thumb against the third finger on her left hand. 

Horrified, she remembers what the newswoman had said. Time halted for those taken by The Snap. Bucky has lived one day since she left Wakanda. 

“You’re engaged.” He isn’t asking a question, and her tears of relief quickly transform into tears of anguish. The hurt marring his beautiful face is unmistakable.

Darcy’s lips tremble. Her knees wobble. “Yes,” she gasps. Bucky lets go of her, and it is amazing how cold and unstable she feels without his touch. 

“Five years, Bucky,” she says, as if this makes it all okay. As if his absence from her world was his fault. As if he can be blamed for her decision to marry someone she will never love as much as him. 

Face glistening, Bucky nods as his nostrils billow. “Five years,” he repeats. His voice cracks, and before she can beg him to stay, before she can pull him inside to watch her chuck the diamond ring down the garbage disposal, Bucky shrinks away. 

With her heart in her throat, Darcy is unable to call to him. She watches him descend the stairs in stunned silence, and it is like losing him all over again.


	5. The Jesus Experience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Black lives matter. 
> 
> https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html [Fairly comprehensive list of organisations to which you can donate. Every little bit helps.] 
> 
> https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ [Resources from the BLM website - includes petitions, more donation links, and other ways to help. Singing a petition is free and easy.]
> 
> To my fellow white people: Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Netflix have grouped incredibly important and informative films and documentaries together for easy access. Please watch them and educate yourself. We do not understand, we will never understand, but we must stand.

**.**

_ it's looking like a limb torn off _

_ or altogether just taken apart _

**. **

Smoke fills the apartment. Clouds of grey billow up and around her face. Darcy coughs, waving her hand over the stovetop. Getting to her tiptoes, she switches on the fan above the stove and watches the fumes shoot into the vent. The eggs still look okay, but she must have added too much oil to the pan. Hopefully Joel will be too tired from his shift to notice. 

Call it old-fashioned, but Darcy cooks Joel breakfast almost every morning, usually having the dish prepared and on a plate the moment he groggily walks through the door smelling of antiseptics and stale sweat. One could also very appropriately—if they were to get a peak inside of Darcy’s brain—call it guilt-led cooking. The morning after they first slept together Darcy made him a full English breakfast. Black pudding and all. Guided from bed by the weighted pit in her stomach, she put bacon, eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms in a skillet and cooked until the smoke alarm went off. 

She remembers that morning painfully well. It lounges around, waiting for the perfect moment to surface. It is rooted in her mind like a massive sequoia. Joel had been so happy. Thrilled they finally took that step after months of Darcy’s proposed plan of _going steady_. He thought it had to do with religious beliefs or a combination of fading religious beliefs and personal preference, but there were no religious elements to the decision. And Darcy is first to admit she has never been one to wait for the “perfect” moment.

She slept with him that night because she was lonely, and she wanted someone— _anyone_ —to slip inside of her and ease just a little bit of the aching loneliness. When it was over, she went in to the bathroom of her old apartment and ran herself a bath. Then she sat in the scalding water, her skin turning pink from the heat, and cried as Joel slept blissfuly in her bed, completely unaware that Darcy felt sick to her stomach with shame. 

Darcy slips the oily eggs on a plate decorated with tomatoes and fried potatoes just as Joel’s key turns the lock on their apartment door. He enters, and she can smell the rubbing alcohol on his scrubs as she cracks another egg into the pan. 

“Smells good,” he says, smiling, always smiling. Dropping his backpack, he shuts the door and kisses her cheek. “I’ll have a quick shower before I eat. It was a long shift.” He shivers. Stepping back, he leans against the counter behind Darcy.

“Mmm, I’ll bet it was. What time are the guys picking you up this evening?” 

“Seven. When are you heading out with the girls?”

Darcy watches the egg whites bubble. “Eight.”

Tonight is the night. The hen do. The stag party. Joel is headed to a casino upstate with his hospital buddies. Darcy is meeting her wedding party at a local club where Joel’s half-sister works. 

In the haze of the last couple of weeks following what the media have dubbed the Blip, Darcy has almost managed to forget that she and Joel and her mother have planned a full wedding. That her hand is heavy with a small diamond, and soon the diamond will sit on top of a platinum band. That in a bakery across the bridge a lemon and lavender cake is chilling in a fridge. That an ivory dress is hanging in her mother’s house, waiting for her.

Throughout this entire process, Darcy has come detached from herself. She does not know the version of herself that picked out the pale pink and ivory colour scheme for the event and the ornamental invites and the venue and the chairs. Whenever her mom reluctantly put a wedding magazine in front of her, Darcy zoned out until something else had been selected for the big day. 

Surprisingly, to Darcy at least, Joel has been immensely helpful. Which only adds to Darcy’s guilt. He is so excited for everything to finally come together the following weekend. Unlike her, who never dreamed up what her wedding day would look like as a child—seeing as she never believed she would get married—Joel had visions for the event starting at age eleven when he watched _My Big Fat Greek Wedding_ for the first time.

He does not deserve what she secretly puts him through. He does not deserve the life she is about to give him. 

Darcy is about to flip her egg over when Joel’s voice invades her ears. “Hey, did you hear about Captain America?”

Darcy goes cold. In spite of the heating flowing through the apartment to combat the early November air outside, goosebumps erupt across her flesh. Her egg hisses. “No,” she says after too long a pause. “What about him?”

“He’s gone.” Joel says it matter-of-factly. Like it’s no big deal. Like he doesn’t need to explain himself immediately. 

“What, uh, what do you mean, _gone_?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, encircling his arms around her from behind. His chin rests atop her head and she feels as though he is a python suffocating her. “The other nurses wouldn’t stop talking about it. I only saw a headline in the _New York Times_. Something about him disappearing.”

The eggs crackle and pop. Charred air wafts up Darcy’s nostrils, but her face pinches for a different reason. 

Captain America. Gone.

Captain America is gone. 

Joel disentangles himself from around Darcy, but she is no more able to breathe than when he was wrapped around her like a vine. He mentions something about the eggs. She doesn’t hear him. His voice is muffled. Far away. By the time the bathroom door shuts, Darcy’s eggs are on fire. 

“Shit,” she breathes, quickly removing the skillet from the heat and watching the small flame die almost instantly. 

It doesn’t matter. She is no longer hungry. Reaching for her phone beside the still-burning stovetop, Darcy opens her _New York Times_ app. No searching is needed. Captain America’s face stares at her. The photograph highlighting the leading story. It is an old picture. One from his war days. She is sure the photo is in some museum she’s been to. Above, the headline makes Darcy’s skull crack open. She feels her brain oozing out of her ears and nose and eyes. 

_Beloved Super-Hero, Captain America, Has Vanished_.

She clicks on the story.

“Using the last of the time travel serum created in collaboration between Bruce Banner and the late Tony Stark, _the Times_ has learned, Captain America, whose given name is Steve Rogers, has left the 21st century. Best known as a leading member of the Avengers Initiative, Rogers resurfaced in 2012 following a heroic action which left him presumed dead during World War Two. Reports suggest he struggled finding his place in the modern world and it is believed at this time his decision to use the time travel serum for his own benefit was largely led by his feelings of isolation. We will update this article as news of Captain America’s new timeline reach us.”

Beneath the paragraph is a compiled list of just about every heroic thing Steve Rogers ever did. 

She met him once. Before she left Wakanda, when she was still holding on to some futile and thin string of hope that Bucky would flee Africa with her. Steve landed in Wakanda and Bucky introduced her to his oldest friend. He used the words “only friend,” but that wasn’t true. Not anymore. But she understood what he meant.

Steve was his soulmate, as much as Darcy wished that spot belonged to her. Their paths were so entwined, so interlocked, it was impossible to see them any other way. 

When Steve found Bucky in the 21st century, he finally started settling in. 

Steve’s voice reached Bucky through HYDRA’s chokehold. Without Steve, Bucky would undoubtedly still be their _soldat_. 

Darcy switches off the burner. Wearing her slippers and pyjamas, un-showered and unfed, she opens the apartment door. 

She knows exactly where she is going. She has mapped this route so concisely she does not bother glancing at street names or landmarks. Early morning joggers and dog walkers stare at her as she makes her way through Brooklyn, wrapping her dressing gown tighter around her. The sky looks like snow. A sheet of white sparkling with hidden sunlight. 

Her heart pounds within her chest. Anxiety snakes its way through her, binding itself to her insides. This is a bad idea. She should turn around, let sleeping dogs lie and gather dust, go back to Joel. Safe Joel. Kind Joel. Okay-in-bed Joel. But she can’t. Physically, she cannot. Her feet refuse to stray off course.

She is haunted by him. She always has been, ever since he exploded into dust particles, but it has gotten worse since his return. _His return_. It still doesn’t feel real. Bucky Barnes has come back to her. Except he hasn’t, because she is the smart girl who decided marrying another person would solve all of her problems. His face from the other night, at first filled with relief and hope, then slashed with betrayal and hurt, is what she sees when she closes her eyes. 

She has not given herself enough time to dwell on the situation. If she did, she would expire in place. Burn from the inside out. Crumble into an ash heap and be carried away by the cold breeze. 

Because this is fucked up. It is all so _wrong_. 

Darcy’s destination sneaks up on her, and she can tell he is just as surprised to see her at his door as she was to see his face on television. He looks as though he is ready to faint. His eyelids flutter. He wobbles, grabbing the doorframe with his bionic hand to keep himself steady. Darcy—instinctively, stupidly, her brain forgetting for a split second that they are far away from each other even as they stand so close—reaches for his flesh-and-bone arm. She touches him, and her fingertips blister on contact. 

Pulling her hand away fast, Darcy straightens and clears her throat, unable to swallow around the chalky mass blocking her airway. She gasps, searching for breath. Searching for something, anything, to say. And he stands there like a crumbling statue. Face hardened, hair hanging limply,blue eyes hollow and lifeless, jaw overgrown with coarse hair. Death. He looks like death incarnate, and it breaks, smashes, Darcy’s heart. 

“Steve,” she ekes out, a wetness coating her cheeks. 

Bucky’s nostrils flair. His teeth clamp together. Anger coats his exhausted face, and Darcy knows half is directed at her. She left him first. 

He nods once. The movement looks painful. Stiff. As if he has been recently thawed. Which can’t be true—his empty stare is enough to freeze her in place. 

“I’m”—she begins, but Bucky holds up a shaky hand and she shuts her mouth.

“Don’t. Please.”

“It isn’t fair,” she tells him. She isn’t sure which situation she’s referring to. Theirs. His and Steve’s. The world’s. 

Bucky’s brow furrows. “Are you still getting married?” His eyes move to her left hand, free of its constricting band. She never wears it when cooking. 

“I think so.”

“You think?” Bucky’s faded eyes widen.

“No,” she says firmly, unsure why she hesitated. Except she knows why. Because every fucking time she so much as thinks of Bucky, it is as if Joel vanishes from existence. “No, I am. I made a commitment.”

“But you don’t love him,” he objects coldly. Exhaustedly. 

This is not the same man she met in Africa. This is some shell, void of life. The world has been too cruel to him. It has stripped him of his humanity. Stolen him from his world. Forced him to live as a monster. And Wakanda was the cure. In a way, _she_ was the cure. And then the world, intent on its destructive path, dealt blow after blow after blow. 

Darcy opens her mouth. Salt bursts on her tongue, and she runs her hands over her face. “You left me, Bucky,” she says, gagging on the words. “You chose to go into that fight after I begged you not to.” This isn’t right. She knows no matter what the Snap would have taken him. Even if he had followed her. But she is still mourning the loss of him, even now, and it is easier to blame him for this mess than to take her share of responsibility. 

“Of course I love you,” she concedes, and the admission is like the expulsion of a demon—hot and freeing, “but I’ve spent the last five and a half years angry at you, trying to get over you.”

Bucky steps forward. In the pale grey light Darcy sees his beard glisten. “Trying?” There is the smallest, most painful tinge of hope in the word. 

“I can’t do this,” she says, though it comes out like a whimper. Like she is losing him all over again. She swallows a sob. It burns her throat. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Bucky. For everything.”

Honestly, she does not know what it is that she can’t do. But rejecting the life she has built herself over the last few years, ruining Joel’s happiness, letting go of her own complacency, calling off the wedding that cost her parents a ridiculous amount of money. None of that seems possible. In a way, it seems too easy. Unattainable. 

Shaky feet carry her away from him, and she pretends this is the only way it could have gone. Leaving both of them torn to shreds, emotional husks, clinging to one another even as they grow farther and farther apart. Bucky calls to her, she thinks. A gargled sound resembling her name reaches her ears, but there is too much clanging in her head for her to hear. 

**.**

Darcy is drunk. Smashed. Blasted. Wasted. Alcohol swims in her blood. Droplets of the stuff perform synchronised dances up and down her body, twirling and digging their toes into her bones, becoming one with her. Her drowsy, live wire eyes sparkle dreamily as Joel’s sister Jamie passes her another shot. She downs it. The vodka tastes like water. Like air. Darcy shouts as she tosses the shot glass on to her bridal party’s VIP table. Snatching the nearest lime, she sucks the remnants of its juice.

The club is alive. Everything inside the tightly packed building pulses. The multicoloured lights, the drinks sloshing into patron’s open mouths. The floor even seems to pulse in time with the thumping bass passing itself off as music that pumps through the expensive speaker system. 

Rising suddenly to her feet, Darcy teeters momentarily and stares out at the dance floor, entranced by the amount of people dancing. They themselves vibrate, causing the foundation to shake. At least, she thinks it’s the gyrating, sweaty, uncaring lot making the structure ripple. Tilting her head to the side, the bride-to-be finds herself tipping backwards. A hand slams against her back. Guides her slowly to the sitting position. 

Darcy looks hazily around. Jane’s brown eyes, which pulse pink and purple and orange, steady her.

It didn’t make any sense at the time, but Jane was the first person Darcy called after Bucky left her apartment the night of the Blip. She could barely speak through the lump of calcified regret and panic and pain in her throat, and Jane, hours ahead in England, stayed on the line until Darcy managed to explain. There had been no plan when she dialled Jane’s number. No thought out speech. She had not necessarily intended to give Jane the entire story of her tragic romance, but she isn’t surprised that the shock of seeing Bucky after _knowing_ he was dead brought it out of her.

Jane had listened. Gasped when necessary, which was fairly often in a tale so filled with secrecy and heartache. 

Darcy had always thought it funny when the friends she shared with Joel said their relationship could work for a film, because in reality their romance is bland. Vanilla.

The silver screen would catch fire if it tried running footage of Bucky entering her for the first time, or cracking his first joke in front of her, or swimming with her on a particularly hot day in a Wakandan lake. He swam better than her with only one arm.

The _Titanic_ had nothing on their story. Especially now. Now that he had risen from the dead, leaving Darcy simultaneously hollow and full. 

At the end, Jane had asked a very simple question.

_Why are you getting married to Joel?_

The answer should have come easily to Darcy. _Because I love him. Because we work well together. Because our kids would be super cute._ But nothing was easy about this situation. They didn’t write relationship books about this shit. _The Jesus Experience: What to do When Your Boyfriend Unexpectedly Comes Back to Life_. _New York Times_ Number One Best Seller. Top of the charts on all e-reader platforms. 

Darcy could use a self help book like that. 

But all she had was Jane. And a small, pulsing voice inside her head berating her for not chucking her ring on the ground and running after Bucky.

Her newly-crowned maid of honour shifts in and out of focus as she tries to get Darcy to look at her. Darcy does her best as an abrupt cascade of tears springs from her eyes. 

“I can’t do this,” she says throatily, the repeated words from earlier scorching her tongue. “I can’t do this. I can’t. This is all wrong. Everything is so fucking wrong.”

Jane frowns and pulls Darcy into a hug. Darcy clings to Jane like the scientist is a life preserver in shark-infested waters. Like she is drowning as serrated teeth gorge on her flesh, and Jane is the only thing capable of rescuing her. 

“It’s okay,” Jane says directly into Darcy’s ear. 

The rest of the wedding party are on the floor. Dancing. Celebrating Darcy’s future as a married woman. 

“It’s okay,” Jane says again. 

Darcy wishes she could believe her. 


End file.
